Persona: Isolation In This Broken Society
by Sonata-Time-Flare-Nocturne-Aoi
Summary: Story complete. What happens when isolation takes over one's conciseness? One could feel hopeless, lost in society's pool of despair and sadness. Rated T.
1. Chapter 1

**Story**: Persona: Isolation In This Broken Society  
**Author**: Nocturne  
**Written**: August 5th, 2019  
**Genre**: Angst  
**Rating**: T (Heavy Themes)  
**Disclaimer**: We do not own Persona or its relatable cast of characters.

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**Chapter 1**

My name…is Futaba Sakura.

I have had far too many painful experiences with people, so much so I now feel like I can no longer trust anyone...not even myself sometimes. Occasionally I go on to wonder what life would have been like if I didn't try to mix-and-mingle or fit in with other people from the start. What if I decided to listen to my instincts back then? I surely would be a very different person compared to the one I am currently. I sighed heavily as I fell backwards onto the grass, gazing listlessly at the wispy clouds migrating slowly across the blue yonder.

Slowly I stretched my arms up towards the ceiling attempting to engage each muscle from the shoulders to the fingers; fanning my digits out wide and bringing them together, then curling them into my palm and back out again. As I performed that task, my eyes were squinting from the ceiling's fluorescent light which sparked a random idea - what if I could harness the sun's energy inside of me? I pretended to gently cup the radiating source of energy with my hands like I was going to gently draw it out of the heavens and replace my heart with it.

_If only I ever could. _

Impulsively I closed my eyes and relaxed my arms, causing them to fall heavily on either side of my body with a slight thump and bounce on impact.

During the initial moments of post-impact, I felt the neurons travel like greased lightning from the tips of my fingers to the back of the skull. It throbbed like a son of a gun, but I thought of pain as just a fleeting and momentary phenomenon; a distantly vague memory floating in the hard to reach crevices of your brain.

_Pain._

Pain is only a word we socially associate with a negative reputation. My perception of pain may differ drastically or totally from the next person to the next and so on. _But what does another person's experience matter when I only ever had myself to base everything on to begin with?_

I continued to lay there silently, enjoying the jubilation of basking under the light of my room and feeling like I was wrapped in a warm embrace of loving arms as my brain lacked initiation in the creation of any intrusive thoughts.

While the cozy bliss was being rapaciously soaked into my integumentary system, I allowed my lungs to release some pent-up tension and stress with an ample expiration of carbon dioxide. As my nostrils inhaled the stuffy yet clean air of my bedroom, my brain sparked to life, triggering the rapid-fire thoughts and thus began the swift descent into the deep, dark spiraling cycle of life-rendering depression. In that split second of time, I instantaneously knew I was once again haphazardly compromised by my own human ego.

The currents of time were unabashed to continue onward with or without you or anything else that neglected to drift with its flow. As I laid on this bed surrounded by pop-culture toys, geeky things, and lots and lots of technology around me, I came to a dismal realization: _Humans are born to die just like everything else on the planet._ Just as the cycle of the fruit fly, our very own life expectancy is practically no more than fifty years.

And why not?

There really is nothing else to expect when you have approached such a degree of maturity. Well, I expect one would just be waiting patiently while relaxing in their beds for their crude mimicry of some god or demon to whisk them away, back into life's never-ending cycle.

Heaving out another weighted breath, I closed my eyelids and renounced my being of self to the murky abyss of space and time, just like the video game I recently played…alone.

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	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

My self-cut red hair was fanned out in messy knots and tangles atop the flat, lackluster pillow my skull laid. Around both eyes were the crusty gunk of dead skin and dried tears in all those fine wrinkles and crevices one never knew they had until such mornings. My eyeballs themselves were bloodshot and dry which enhanced that lovely prickly-with-irritation feel to them. Each muscle attached my skeletal system was either aching or cramped or both from the restless and stressful night of night terrors and pretty much no sleep. Overall, I woke up miserable and definitely on the wrong side of the bed.

I grunted and struggled to twist my body up and off the bed into a sitting position. After a few seconds break I turned my gaze to the right, looking towards the fairly small sweating window in the wall. Pulling my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around them, I rested my head tiredly on my arms. I was tired and felt no motivation at all to get up and start my day.

_Though, Sojiro's coffee can always persuade me to do its bidding. _

I sighed and glanced to the bedside table looking at my alarm clock that read just shy of three in the morning.

_My heart-attack enabler is going to to go off._

_ Better turn it off before that!_ I picked it up and switched it off then placing it back onto the small furnishing groggily.

I emitted another long and deep breath whilst trying to convince myself that today was going to be one of the best days ever.

_It's going to be like the first morning of an extended holiday or winning a lottery. __It's just going to be a great day!_

I chanted that like a mantra for a few minutes before feeling panic that I might have stalled too long in bed. I shot my gaze to my clock again, glaring at the face; five past three. I had to get up and at the least brush out my rat's nest of hair, wash my face and brush my teeth. I flung the ratty, worn-out down blanket off my sore body and hobbled over to the small washroom to perform the monotonous morning ritual.

A few days had passed since that outing I took to the 'dark web'. Once a month or so I needed a sanguine break from my constraints of reality to keep my sanity intact. Ever since my mother died of a mysterious accident, I had not been able to keep my cool for too long...every little instance got me so wound up that I found it extremely difficult to wind down for any given day. I thought I was beginning to lose my mind...and myself. Honestly, I was getting scared of what I was doing and becoming. I didn't know what actions to take, but I knew I needed to get it together and move on and finally live for myself and on my own. No one was going to live my life for me, so I needed to go and just live life.

_"Easier said than done..."_

Looking at my reflection staring back at me with that fierce and piercing gaze in the mirror crushed all those words of encouragement into nothing. This was one of the main reasons why no one wants to be around me; I always look irritated and ready to explode! The way my dull brown eyes reflected the light gave me this spiteful glint and the creasing between my brows casted shadows of promised gripe.

_How was I supposed to fix myself of these problems? Those features I can not solve on my own… _

I shook my head with severe disappointment at my lacking image of myself in the looking glass. _If I had looked for one second longer, I would have punched that person reflected at me._

I left the room with heavy feet, venturing into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water and guzzled it like I was thirsty. I finished off round two and placed the glass upside down in the sink to let dry. While standing at the sink I got lost in thought for a few minutes, just staring off past the counter at the bland wall over the faucet.

_My life would have been better if it was different; born from a different mother, perhaps growing up with a sibling, finishing out my education, pursuing a part-time job someone or even here at Cafe Leblanc, not associating with any crowd I was not comfortable with outside the internet...I could have been a better person and living a better life. To be honest, I would much rather of been dead and not deal with any of this or that to begin with._

My gaze fell to the grimy stained tile and deteriorating grout I was standing on. As soon as that thought completed its manifestation I was stricken with heavy guilt. I knew I should not be thinking those depressing thoughts, but that was how I felt! That was the resulting emotions I harbored after all those years of strife and despair. How else was I supposed to feel? I'm not a machine so not feeling was not an option. Not a healthy one at least. Feeling, to me, was more healthy and 'normal' than not feeling at all. Living life is to hurt and be sad and to wallow in self pity. I knew that and I knew I was taking it too far...

_...but who was there to stop me?_

Getting fed up with my constant dark thoughts I decided it was about time to finally get a move on with the day. I inhaled long and deep filling my lungs to full capacity, feeling the expansion of the twin organs inside my rib cage inflate and widen my chest cavity. I held it for five seconds, counting slowly down from five. When I hit one I forced the air out quickly from my diaphragm while shaking my hands at my hips, imagining all the negative thoughts falling out of my fingertips with each jerk of my wrists.

_That should suffice for now._

I nodded my head while inhaling once more and exhaled normally as I made my way to the entry door. I grabbed my outer wear and marched through the threshold like I had a purpose in life.

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	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Aimlessly traveling through city alone was like treading blindly into a minefield; it was tough and exhausting. Weaving through the crowd and not touching another person was close to impossible in this city. No matter the time of day or the weather condition, there was always a promise of a mass swarm of bodies ping-ponging you around during your duration outdoors.

_That's life in Tokyo I guess..._

I was fortunate enough to stumble across that lazy rich man that preferred to spend the money to have someone run his shop so he did not have to do the peon work around here. It was a small, shabby miscellaneous goods shop. That scoundrel bought the items second hand, inflated the retail prices and sold it to poor fools willing to buy it. I was not proud to purchase things here, let me tell you that. Every time I buy some pop-culture item or occasional item, I am consumed with guilt and I feel like I need to scrub my skin raw of those unethical practices as soon as I got home. I hated it there with a passion, but I really had nowhere else to go and with my lacking social skills of shopping at more crowded and higher-end stores, no one else was going to notice anyways. I was stuck going there like a rock in a hard place with a double-edged sword.

_Living life was far more taxing than what the bigwigs were leading us into believing…_

After an hour or so of walking I had (what felt like) at long last made it to the dilapidated concrete front steps of the worn out faux goods shop. The solid wooden doors were weathered and it's varnish was so expired that it was flaking and peeling off in generous chunks. The ornamental metal hardware adorning the wood was rusting profoundly and groaned loudly as it needed to be forced with great effort to be moved. The movements of the hinge caught on buildup of debris quite often, so at least once a week I had to use one of my old toothbrushes to brush the contraption clean.

Honestly, I think one of the main contributors to the reason why no one really really came in this shop was because the door was like wrestling a sumo wrestler…or pushing a boulder up a mountain side. Not a lot of people would chose to do that and certainly not a lot of people _can_ do that!

As I went to grab the cleaning supplies a sudden wave of uncontrollable sadness rush through my body. It started in the area of my diaphragm and surged out like tidal waves, taking over my being - conquering everything in its wake. I was only a few steps away when I just crumbled like falling confetti to the floor, tears falling ceaselessly from my eyes and my body trembling with the intense sobs. I covered my face with my hands, resting my head pathetically on top of my lap. I had no ideas as to why this this onset of despair was triggered, but it was taking everything I had to pull myself together.

_Why couldn't I live a normal life...I was so weak from not doing much with myself..._

The only reason I came to this shop was to give myself some breathing room once in a while. Sojiro doesn't know about this place. I find this lonely place kind of nice...a home away from home actually. Alone, quiet. Not aesthetically pleasing like my room, but it was good enough.

Today though...things would change forever.

On an old dusty table I noticed a strange taken sitting all by its lonesome. I've never seen it before, nor have I ever noticed it in the past. There was a a bit of hesitation before attempting to grab it and see what it was all about. Taking in a deep breath, I reached for it and pull it toward me slowly.

My eyes lit up when I realized what it was.

A calling card.

_No...this can't be...why would something like this be here? Surely it wasn't me they would be after..._

The Phantom Thieves...

I admired them a lot. These vigilantes that fought against the status quo for the sake of the common people.

I slowly slump down to the ground with abated breath.

It would be cool if they would do something about my own problems...about the one who murdered my mother...

Wishful thinking, I know.

But...

_What if it was really possible?_

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